


Breath

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-10
Updated: 2008-01-10
Packaged: 2019-01-19 21:40:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12418707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Narcissa Malfoy reflects on the three Black sisters. Oneshot, please R&R!





	Breath

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

Obscured 

They had always been referred to as "The Black Sisters", as though they were a single entity, as though the three of them were the same. And in the eyes of the society they grew up in, at least in the beginning, they were. Three daughters, each beautiful, each well-brought up, each pureblooded. But among those who knew them, there were always differences. When they were children, playing with their dolls in the drawing room after a long day of lessons, you would notice something. 

*** 

Andromeda would cuddle her dolls, kissing them gently, taking care of even the most ragged one. It was strange for someone who didn't know her, that this proud, haughty, little girl would show such care. Later, years later, Narcissa would remember how Andi stroked the hair of each doll, and then reflect that perhaps it shouldn't have been such a surprise when Ted Tonks came along. 

There is no room for gentleness in the Black household. 

***

Narcissa, Cissa, would sit her straight-backed dolls in tiny chairs, and hold tea-parties for them. They were not the sweet country tea parties that Andi held for her household, but formal, stiff, dinners. The dolls would be perfectly behaved, the food would be delicious, and the dinner conversation would be exactly as her mother would have dictated. Nothing ever went wrong in those dinners. 

Like her life now. Perfect. Cold. Utterly and completely beyond scrutiny. 

***

Bellatrix would sit in the corner with her dolls, and whisper, always whisper, strange stories to them. No-one ever knew what she said, but Narcissa guessed that even then, Bellatrix was as psychotic and paranoid as she ever was, though she only showed to it the ones couldn't tell anyone: the plastic and wooden ears, hearts, eyes that could only listen dumbly. 

Narcissa didn't even bother to think why her sister became the way she was. 

***

As teenagers, the three of them would sit together, laughing, telling their childish dreams for the futures and for their husbands. They were still unaware, really, of the way their futures would have been, despite the fact that anyone looking in on their lives would have probably guessed. 

Andi was the sweet one, the one with the most aspirations, dreaming silently of a life beyond the Blacks. Narcissa was more dutiful: she knew, vaguely, that her husband would be chosen for her, but she still believed her parents would make the right choice, and for her the future was as bright as any others. Bellatrix, Bella, with her beauty and her intelligence and her charisma, could have probably had any pureblooded boy she wanted back then. Later, of course, things changed. 

Slowly, though, over the years, they drifted apart. Andi ran away with her Mudblood, Cissa stayed behind and married Lucius Malfoy, who never tired of reminding her that he had originally wanted Andromeda, that she was a substitute, while Bella... 

Bella changed. 

Even though the family had never officially disowned Bellatrix Lestrange, in Narcissa's mind, her sister, the beautiful, intelligent, sane Bella was dead. In her place was a sister she was afraid of, who ranted and raved, whose beauty was still there, but was now tempered by a strange and terrible rage at the world. 

But Narcissa remained where she was. She never told anyone about her fear of Bellatrix, her own sister, and she certainly did not let anyone realise that to her, Andi was a better sister than Bella. Andi, who had run away, who had brought shame on the house hold that Narcissa still loved, despite everything. Andi, who Narcissa had not seen for so long. 

In fact, she never even let herself think it. It was always just there, just hidden in the darker, more rebellious corner of her mind. 

*** 

One night though, one faithful night when the wizarding world was on the brink of destroying a monster, when she was at home alone and the stars in the sky seemed to mock her, she paused. With one sister dead, and another sister who might as well be dead, she paused. She took out an old, dusty photo from the bottom of the wooden chest where it had lain for so many years. For a while Narcissa Malfoy just stood there, looking down at the old photo, her face expressionless. Then, as the rest of the wizarding world fought and triumphed and failed and died, as chaos erupted, she took the photo, and put it slowly into the fireplace. 

The fire burned hot; the house-elves had, like always, made sure of that. The three figures in the photo continued laughing, without a care in the world. They knew they were to be destroyed, in the strange way that the subjects of photos knew these things. And so, even as the heat grew, they kept laughing. 

***

 The world remembers the Black Sisters like this: Narcissa Malfoy, the cold, the beautiful, the dutiful. Andromeda Tonks, the sweet one, the graceful, the idealist. And Bellatrix Lestrange, the idealist of a different kind, the haunted, the insane.

In the photo, though, the same photo whose edges are curling up, whose figures are slowly being obscured forever, they are simply three sisters.

 Narcissa takes a breath. 


End file.
